Parking Spaces An Endangered Species

February 9, 1986|By Andy Rooney, Tribune Media Services

A lot of people who know how to drive don't seem to know how to park. There are drivers who can put a 19-foot car in a 20-foot space on the first try. Others will take 10 minutes trying to park a Volkswagen in a space a tractor-trailer just pulled out of.

Poor parkers are divided into two categories: the people who don't have a good sense of how to jockey a car into a parking place and the inconsiderate drivers who don't care about anyone else.

If there are 250 cars parked in the lot of a mall or supermarket, you can bet that 50 of those cars are taking up two spaces. The people who park with their tires across a diagonal line in a lot force the next person to edge over too.

Parallel parking at a curb is an art that few people have mastered.

I'm waiting for automakers to invent a small car with wheels fitted to the underside of the car, like casters on a rollaway bed. When you got alongside a parking place, you could drop your casters, lock them in place and shift into a gear that would roll the car sideways into the spot. The space would have to be only an inch longer than the car to accommodate it and you wouldn't have to fight the steering wheel for five minutes to get the car into place.

Hunting for a parking place is an art in itself. You have to size up the people coming out of a store. You have to be a good judge of where they're going and how far their car is so you can position yourself to take their place when they drive off.